by Tim Pears
‘He’s doing his best, father,’ Simon suggested. Simon admired a politician who was not only a bachelor but appeared to regard politics as a dutiful diversion from more worthwhile pursuits, like racing yachts and conducting orchestras.
‘Well, it’s not bloody good enough, then!’ Charles exclaimed. Enough of the rest of the country agreed to give the Labour Party victory.
‘Now that’s really buggered us up!’ Charles pronounced, as the miners were given a 35 per cent pay rise.
The power cuts that disrupted public-sector schools provided Charles with the excuse he needed to forsake his meritocratic principles without admitting he was doing so. The fact was that Alice was the most academically gifted of the children; she actually seemed to enjoy school, which was a novelty. Charles owed it to himself to see at least one of his offspring go on to university, and he owed it to Alice too, so he enrolled her at a girls’ boarding school whose exorbitant fees impressed him almost as much as their examination results.
‘They’ve got a fully equipped laboratory,’ he told Alice.
‘I suppose you think we should have gone to a public school now,’ Simon ventured.
‘Codswallop!’ Charles replied. ‘Single-sex education should be compulsory for girls, because they get distracted so easily, but it’s catastrophic for boys,’ he explained. ‘As everyone knows,’ he added.
‘Yes, Father,’ Simon concurred, as he usually did. Having done well in marketing, Charles had ordered another promotion: Simon now had his own office with a sign on the door saying Assistant Manager of Personnel.
‘You’re a very lucky girl, Alice,’ Simon told her.
‘Yes, Simon,’ she agreed.
‘It’s an opportunity none of the rest of us have had,’ he continued. He knew he was only repeating his father’s opinions, and unless Charles was in the immediate vicinity it was an act difficult to maintain. ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘have you seen the uniform? Maroon: it’ll set off your colouring nicely.’ Everyone else offered sympathy. Zoe found out when she came to lunch the following Sunday, and took Alice aside.
‘You poor thing,’ she said, stroking Alice’s auburn hair. ‘Boarding school. It’s like going into the army.’
‘Yes, Zoe.’
‘The most important thing is to remember who you are, Alice. If they grind you down, just find a quiet corner and tell yourself: “I am an individual. I am Alice Freeman.” Like a mantra, kind of.’
‘Thanks, Zoe.’
Laura was the most put out of all, and the night before Alice left she cried on Alice’s shoulder. ‘At least you’ll come home at half-term.’
‘Of course I will.’
‘And we can write letters to each other. You can even phone me when you get too lonely,’ Laura sniffed. ‘It’s just not fair,’ she wept.
‘I know,’ Alice agreed, trying to conjure up tears of her own. The truth was Alice looked forward to boarding school. She wasn’t daunted by the things that other people were worrying about on her behalf: a military regime, the loss of privacy, dormitories, cold showers, compulsory games in bad weather and the intimidating prospect of being the only new girl in the middle of term. None of these things bothered Alice because she lived in a world of her own, and anyway they paled by comparison with what she looked forward to: she’d become bored at school, yawning over her homework because it was too easy, unable to discuss chemistry experiments with her classmates because they were still grappling with basic formulae while she was keen to repeat the more advanced experiments of Marie Curie, whose portrait was pinned to the wall above her bed where other girls had Marc Bolan and David Cassidy. Alice wasn’t distracted by boys – she hadn’t been distracted by Harry Singh – but she was bored. She looked forward to more rigorous study under teachers who might inspire her, or at least whom she could treat as equals.
Harry Singh, meanwhile, was deeply unhappy. Unlike her family in the house on the hill, Harry had already been pining for Alice for months. School had broken up back in June, so he didn’t see her there any more, and then James had gone to the farm for the summer, robbing Harry of the excuse to visit her home. In September Harry himself went off to university in Manchester, to study economics. There’d been no question of Harry taking a year off: he didn’t have time to waste because he already knew what he wanted from life and where he was going. The trouble was that one of the things he wanted was Alice. He’d made his choice – or, rather, his choice had been made for him by fate, by her being alive and their paths crossing – and when Harry Singh had set his mind on something he was constitutionally incapable of considering other options.
Going to university entailed leaving home, going away to study in a strange town, and it served a dual purpose: part education, and part learning to establish the relationships and the independence of adulthood. Harry was able to fulfil the first, having been a straight-As pupil in school; he may not have had his beloved’s intellect but he was single-minded and studied, wrote essays, read text books, revised and took exams with a clear-eyed method and a minimum of fuss. In the second, however, he was adrift: all around him his fellow students got drunk in the subsidized bar; got stoned on poor-quality grass; lost themselves in the blistering shadows of dinning discos, in slippery kisses and befuddled couplings; then found themselves in demonstrations for free contraception and civil rights in Northern Ireland, and engaged in vehement argument about the meaning of life that lasted all night in small, crowded rooms, where they would wake at noon in the arms of unexpected lovers.
To all this activity Harry was a well-dressed spectator (he wore a suit at college, and was constantly taken for a particularly young lecturer or member of the administrative staff), a wallflower at the discos, a passive smoker of marijuana, a bookworm in the library while others waved placards, the only student in the accommodation block who slept every night in his own bed, alone. He didn’t even have the consolation of alcohol, since he was a teetotaller, not because of his upbringing but because he’d tried it once and it made him feel unsure of himself; Harry Singh needed by his nature to be clear-eyed. Right now, however, he was too clear-eyed: all he could see was Alice Freeman. Her image floated before him, just out of reach. She left him alone to study but the rest of the time tormented him: for she was what he didn’t have.
Harry wasted the entire Christmas vacation of 1974 back home in the town sneaking glimpses of Alice. He even went to church on Christmas morning, and felt so uncomfortable, so alien, in the traditional heart of the culture he regarded himself as being a part of but not knowing when to stand up or sit down or kneel, always one step behind those around him, that he almost bolted during one of the hymns. But he forced himself to stay, and such was his sense of purpose that when Alice (seated two pews in front) joined the queue for communion he jumped up and followed her, and took bread and wine for the first time in his life, without a hiccup.
He also went to the temple with his father and brother, and realized to his dismay that he felt a twinge of envy for his conformist, hide-bound brother, Anil; the same patient, unambitious brother who by the age of eight knew the price of every item in the shop, who preferred stacking shelves in the evening to watching TV, who had risen without complaint at dawn to do a newspaper round before school. For Anil had agreed, at the age of ten, to his parents’ arranging a marriage for him, with a distant cousin in India. He’d gone over with his father a couple of years later and the two children (she was three years younger) had been introduced to each other, and got on awkwardly but well. Thereafter Anil carried a passport-size photograph of his betrothed with him at all times, a photograph updated every year; the outdated ones he stuck in a small album that showed her growing up, growing towards womanhood, towards him.
It had been agreed that Anil would go over for his wedding, and return with his bride, when she was eighteen and he was twenty-one. The date was still five years off, but Anil was a patient man. So, Harry thought, was he – it was one of the few qualities he shared with his b
rother. He too could wait, as long as he knew that what he awaited was certain.
Alice’s graceful carriage in a Christian church, along with one or two other glimpses, saw Harry through the holidays, but once back at college his melancholy returned. He bit his fingernails, found himself wide awake in the middle of the night, ate bad food and put on weight.
February came, the most gloomy month, but right in the middle of it St Valentine’s Day. Harry’s accommodation block was awash with amorous intrigue and rumour. Home-made and shop-bought cards appeared in pigeon holes, single red roses were propped against doors in the white corridors, cryptic messages were pinned to notice-boards, infantile announcements (Bunny Baby Bear be my Valentine love Blatty Wuffles) appeared in the campus newsletter, and a huge banner was hung from the rafters of the refectory during the night so that everyone at breakfast could see that
At the sight of which Harry lost his appetite.
The following weekend Harry took the train home. On Saturday morning he walked up the drive to the big house clutching a small bouquet of early primroses. Laura answered the door and recognized Harry Singh, head boy at school, from his readings at morning assembly, as well as his occasional appearances in the house with James; though he’d always been clutching a cheap instamatic camera on those occasions, not flowers.
‘Didn’t you know?’ she asked. ‘James doesn’t live here any more. He lives down in Gath. I can get you his number—’
‘No,’ Harry interrupted. ‘I came to see Alice.’
‘Alice?’ Laura frowned. ‘Well, she doesn’t live here either. She’s at boarding school.’
‘Oh, no,’ Harry replied, sagging. He took a step back, then forward again; then he turned round, and slowly descended two or three steps; then stopped again. Laura stood still, entranced by his confused indecision. After some moments she saw his back expand as he took a deep breath, and his crumpled shoulders rise. He turned back to face her.
‘Is Mr Freeman in?’ Harry asked.
‘Mr Freeman?’ Laura queried. Who were these flowers for? she wondered.
‘Her father,’ Harry confirmed. ‘Charles Freeman. Is he at home, or has he left as well?’
Laura led him to the library and left him there. It was a room he’d sneaked glimpses of in passing and always wanted to enter, and now here he was; maybe it was that satisfaction that countered his heart’s thumping, because he didn’t feel at all intimidated as he surveyed the stacks of unread books, the formidable portraits, the immense, engulfing armchairs, the Persian rugs and, at the far end, Charles’ vast desk. Instead Harry Singh – whose family’s whole flat above the shop, he reckoned, would fit into this room – looked calmly round and thought to himself: This is good, this is what I’ve imagined; this will do for me, although personally I don’t like the colour of those curtains.
Suddenly the double doors burst open and Charles Freeman came striding into the room, his 6-foot-2, 18-stone frame causing the hundreds of books on their shelves to nervously giggle, like an approaching steamroller as he marched over to Harry, demanding good naturedly, ‘Well, young man, what can I do for you?’ until he came to a stop a few inches short of Harry’s face, as was his imposing habit.
Harry, though, didn’t flinch. ‘I’ve come, sir,’ he stated, ‘to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage.’
Charles made no response. His broad smile died away and he remained blank-faced for some time. He looked like Harry’s grandmother after many hours in front of the television. Was he even breathing? It didn’t look like it – his eyes had lost all sign of life. But then the lips moved.
‘I beg your pardon, young man?’ they asked, all on their own in a face of stone. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’m asking for permission,’ Harry replied, his heart hammering but his mind clear, ‘to marry your daughter.’
‘My daughter?’ the lifeless lips intoned.
‘Yes, sir. Your daughter Alice.’
‘I see,’ said the lips. And then Harry Singh received first hand, for the first (and indeed the last) time, one of Charles Freeman the man-in-charge’s full-in-the-face, legendary tongue lashings. Without warning and without build-up Charles switched from impassivity to fury in an instant and proceeded to rage at the unfortunate youth a few inches in front of him.
‘Why, you insolent, idiotic imbecile! You jumped-up juvenile delinquent! You backward brown bloody booby, how dare you? HOW DARE YOU? Spotty, wet-behind-the-ears, poverty-stricken son of a shopkeeper, you Asian upstart, you have the gall to ask me for my one and only adorable daughter’s, my fourteen-year-old daughter’s, hand?’
Charles railed, his eggs-and-bacony breath, flecks of spittle and the heat of his rage cascading down upon young Harry Singh’s face, and he could have carried on for ages – he would have – except that the thing that always happened wasn’t happening: young Harry Singh was not withering beneath the onslaught. In fact, Charles realized disbelievingly, the boy seemed to be smiling. And, robbed of his victim’s customary capitulation, the tyrant’s tirade dried up, his bully’s bile petered out.
‘Feather-brained … foreign … feckless …’ Charles, his trembling bulk heaving, heard not his oaths and curses but only his laboured breathing. He also became aware of the smell of cardamom on the young man’s breath.
‘Foppish … foolish … fiend!’ Charles blurted out, before his invective finally ground to a halt.
Harry wiped his face with the back of his hand, without either taking his eyes off Charles or subduing his mild, friendly smile.
‘Have you finished, sir?’ he asked respectfully. And when there came no reply he continued, calmly (even though he could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears): ‘Thank you for your time, sir. I’m glad we’ve had a chat, and I appreciate your provisional response. I assure you that I shall prove myself a worthy suitor to your daughter, for whom I hold the most honourable feelings, as well as the greatest respect for your family.’
With that Harry nodded and turned to make his way around the gargantuan frame before him and towards the door. Then he stopped.
‘Oh,’ he added, passing a crumpled bouquet of primroses into Charles’ astonished hand, ‘and these, sir, are for your wife.’
‘My wife?’ Charles spluttered. And although under normal circumstances Harry’s idiotic mistake would have been enough to set Charles off again, this time he was unable to do anything other than watch the young man’s departing figure leaving the room with a jaunty stride.
At the Echo, the photographers’ days – unlike the subeditors’, split in two, or the journalists’, out chasing leads – were unpredictable but on the whole relaxed on that provincial paper. They were sent out either accompanying a reporter or, as often as not, on their own to cover an event with no more than a photograph and a brief by-line.
In between times they drank tea and ate sandwiches in the office, and said little as they collated prints and loaded their cameras. They never went to the pub.
‘You might be able to type with trembling fingers, Jim boy,’ Roger Warner told James, ‘but you can’t expect to take a decent photo unless you’re stone-cold sober. You’d best keep away from the pen-pushers if I was you,’ he advised. ‘A photographer needs three things: an eye, nerve and a steady hand.’
James also received advice from the editor. Mr Baker (no one appeared to know, let alone use, his Christian name) was a dour, scrupulous man who rarely came out of his office. He hated sloppy journalism, was a stickler for detail, and had been known to keep the presses waiting and, later, the distributors’ vans ticking over, newsagents nervous, street sellers impatient and delivery boys and girls kicking their heels all over the town while he scrutinized a controversial article – sometimes with the aid of a lawyer from upstairs – checking the facts were correct. Once he was convinced that they were he ran the story, no matter how scandalous it might be. His clarion call was not so much truth as accuracy.
Mr Baker disliked ornate description, sloppiness an
d irrelevant detail much more than partiality, because that could be balanced by an article in the next issue, whereas fudge and vagueness couldn’t be redeemed, they left a woolly impression in the reader’s mind and that was that. And photographs had, in the house style, to be similarly unfussy.
Shortly after James had completed his apprenticeship in the darkroom and was being sent out to take photographs, early in 1975, Mr Baker summoned him to his office. He’d discovered James was the son of Charles Freeman, who as well as appearing regularly in the newspaper as a prominent local businessman, member of the Round Table and pillar of the community, had also been the subject of one or two articles about aggrieved ex-employees and disgruntled business rivals. Mr Baker wanted to set his mind at rest, and soon established that this stuttering young man was no troublemaker, at least. When he asked James what his ambition was he replied:
‘I just want to take pictures, Mr Baker.’
‘And I hope you’ll take plenty of good ones for us,’ the editor affirmed. ‘Nothing flashy. Our readers are ordinary people. They deserve a clear picture, and that’s what we try to give them.’
* * *
James had, meanwhile, gradually got to know the other bedsit residents, or at least gained a nodding acquaintance, since there appeared to be an unwritten rule that they didn’t invite each other into their rooms or presume so to trespass. Instead they met on the stairs or, leaving the house at the same time, exchanged a few polite words about the weather. Once or twice during an evening the telephone would ring loudly in the front hallway and whoever was passing or was nearest answered and yelled up the stairwell to whoever it was for – usually one of the two students at the top of the house.
On the first floor next to James’ room was Jim – which might have caused some confusion except that Jim never received phone calls. He was a middle-aged man who by coincidence worked in the Freeman factory and set off across town at dawn for the early shift on his bicycle, which he carried up and down the stairs and kept in his room, along with a spare pair of boots, a change of clothes, five library books, the food of a parsimonious diet, and a shelf-ful of notebooks in which Jim recorded his reflections and observations of life.